


not the lake that never gives up its dead, but close enough

by strikethesun



Series: wars of the roses modern/reincarnation AU [1]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Constant flashbacks, Discussion of fertility issues, F/M, Pregnancy, Prequel, Self-Reflection, Trauma, hagiography mention, i wish this passed the bechdel test, only a little bit of woobification, takes place in chicago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikethesun/pseuds/strikethesun
Summary: "margaret put her arm around catherine’s waist, and they both looked out to the water. 'the thing you said about knowing him—that was what we fought over that time.''oh, that wasn’t a fight, marguerite,' she twinkled. 'that was you unloading some pretty heavy trauma on me.'"margaret is pregnant with her second child, but can't stop thinking about what it was like to be pregnant with the first one.
Relationships: Henry VI/Marguerite d'Anjou | Henry VI/Margaret of Anjou
Series: wars of the roses modern/reincarnation AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1831168
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	not the lake that never gives up its dead, but close enough

**Author's Note:**

> a prequel to [this crazy lazy river that we call life,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071943) but i think both stand on their own, relatively speaking.

“okay, now tell me what the good news is,” catherine said, swaying over to the bar.

margaret held up her glass of conspicuous sprite, not liquor. “well, i wouldn’t normally refuse your offer of a good drink, but…” she trailed off, looking down at her still-flat stomach.   


catherine’s eyes went wide, and her smile soon followed. “ _ marguerite!” _ she hurried around the counter in order to give her a tight, long hug. wiping away tears, she let the knowledge sink in for a moment: she would have another grandchild. perhaps it would be a granddaughter—she had never had a granddaughter before. henry and margaret had never had a daughter. edmund, either—her boys had only had boys, two roaming exiled cousins who never had the chance to meet. catherine tried not to think about edmund, or that other henry— _ she was lucky to have what she had. _

margaret stared at catherine, trying to track the progress of her thoughts through her facial expressions. “is something the matter?”

“no, of course not, honey.” catherine turned her head away, studying the massive windows of her apartment. half of chicago stood out in bright lights against the backdrop of the night. to the right, an expanse of black—that lake which seemed to go on forever, much farther than the great sea seemed to stretch out from calais. she tried to make out the shimmering of waves, but perhaps the moon wasn’t bright enough that night. “i imagine it’s going to be quite different for all of us, though.”

margaret stood up and joined catherine’s side as she absentmindedly pattered toward the windows. “what do you mean?”

catherine stopped. “your baby—will be  _ new,  _ i assume.”

“oh.” margaret had the urge to hold ned’s hand, but she had just watched henry lead him up the stairs, off to bed. “wait. how did you know we had news to share?”   


catherine grinned more than a little smugly. “i’ve known henry forever, and i’d like to think you and i have made up for lost time. you two aren’t normally as giggly as you were over dinner.”

margaret nodded, but her mind wandered to some of those early meetings with her mother-in-law—it was exciting, at first, being the only former-french-noblewomen who could bond over their love of henry. but  _ i’ve known henry forever _ —that bugged her. that had proven to be a yawning void between them, a sort of possessiveness over knowing him. what mattered more: knowing his first words, his first steps, his favorite toys, the weight of him fully in your arms, or knowing him as a man, the light in his eyes when he kissed his son’s head for the first time, the absence of light in those same eyes for months on end, the weight of him felt on the other side of the bed?

neither knew his last words, or his last steps. he hardly knew them himself—there was the clattering of horses’ hooves, and armor, and  _ york’s boy  _ was there, and he didn’t know if he was supposed to kneel or not, but then someone led him back to the tower, and the rest was a dream. was it days, weeks, months, before a guard told him his son was dead? and he didn’t remember anything after that part at all.

but ned’s small hand on his arm brought him back to the present. ned was not dead, he was the furthest thing from dead—a small, wriggling child, still full of possibilities. in a few years, he would begin to grow past the point that henry had known him at—but he was so clearly and visibly not the same child as then that he wondered if the difference would be obvious. 

“dad. can you tell me another story tonight?”

henry smiled. somehow, he had managed to get his son hooked on hagiography (he once joked to a skeptical margaret that this would be a good name for a new line of educational programming), and he had gotten into the habit of telling him about obscure saints and other religious figures in the form of bedtime stories. he presented them as nothing more than stories, because he decided ned was at least a little too young for the conversations he always yearned to have, about how he kept believing in the catholic god despite everything. margaret didn’t like those conversations very much—religion was a topic rarely broached in their household, despite the fact that henry’s entire career was built around talking about religion. 

margaret, meanwhile, refused to leave her work at the door—ned was uniquely primed on all matters political. henry was hesitant to bring up the contradiction there, so instead he circumnavigated it by teaching ned about his passion in secret, while he tucked their child into bed. 

margaret was still lost in thought—taking advantage of the fact that catherine didn’t seem to know what to say, margaret relived the first time she had come over to this apartment. she was pregnant then, too, but much further along that time; when she tensed up she could feel ned respond in turn, and she found herself unable to think about anything other than the  _ last  _ time she was pregnant—when she clutched henry’s limp hand to her swollen belly, ned kicked in the same spot— _ did he know what kind of world he was emerging into?  _

maybe that was what had put her in a bad mood. pregnancy hadn’t agreed with her, now or then, but the worst part was that it forced her to think of  _ then, _ whereas normally, she could attempt to banish it from her mind entirely. she struggled to imagine the  _ new  _ ned, and then all she could think of was the  _ old  _ one, and very few of those memories were happy, since the unhappy ones had a tendency to bleed into the rest.  _ blood, like— _

“i’ll give you two some time to catch up,” henry had said, heading up those same stairs that he had followed ned up a few minutes ago. 

catherine had fixed margaret with an unexpectedly piercing gaze. “how’s the pregnancy treating you?”

margaret slumped down onto a sofa. “to be honest, i haven’t been this miserable in a while.”  _ if anyone could understand, it’s catherine, right?  _ “i’m constantly second-guessing myself. maybe this is an awful idea, and we shouldn’t have children, because what if we’re just not  _ meant  _ to? and what if he’s just going to be sad and angry, angry that we made him live again?”

catherine sat next to her, about to put her arms around her daughter-in-law in a way that she knew comforted henry but then refrained, not knowing how margaret would react. “you know, i was scared for a while that i was doing the wrong thing by having henry again. but i couldn’t imagine living without him.”

margaret found her breath again. “but did you think about it from  _ his  _ perspective?”

“well, i thought i knew my boy well enough to know that he would want another shot—”

“maybe you were wrong.”

the air around them grew cold.  _ and then what happened? _ margaret could barely remember anymore. catherine probably tried to defend herself, and margaret launched into some sort of soliloquy. she couldn’t remember the words, but the basic shape of them came easily to her: “you’re always saying you knew him, but you stopped living with him when he was a little boy. and for what? some mean duke told you you had to retreat to some pretty little estate in the middle of nowhere so you could fuck off with your lover? do you know how many women never had that chance? do you even know that henry always felt a little betrayed by you, because you basically orphaned him so you could have new children, uncomplicated ones, while he could never, ever escape, for as long as he lived? you didn’t even see him when he was—when he was like  _ that—” _ _  
_

“i saw my father, margaret.”  _ yes, that’s what she said to all that, that’s right:  _ “they were very different men, but it was the same madness. madness is all the same,” catherine said softly. “you’re pregnant and you’re tired.”

to that, margaret had gotten up and stormed out of the apartment.  _ where was she going, out in the rain? why did she come back?  _

catherine finally spoke. “margaret. did i say the wrong thing?”

margaret chuckled mirthlessly. “i was just thinking about the first time i came over to this apartment.”

catherine put her arm around margaret’s shoulders—she knew, now, that this was the correct way to comfort her daughter-in-law. “we were both younger and stupider then.”

margaret put her arm around catherine’s waist, and they both looked out to the water. “the thing you said about  _ knowing him _ —that was what we fought over that time.”   


“oh, that wasn’t a fight,  _ marguerite,”  _ she twinkled. “that was you unloading some pretty heavy trauma on me.”

“well,  _ yeah,  _ but i don’t think i was entirely in the wrong.”   


“that’s the difference between you and me.” catherine squeezed her shoulder. “i’ve always known i’m in the wrong. remember how i didn’t defend myself? i knew it wasn’t right for a mother to abandon her young son to the tangled world of court politics. i did it anyways—though, to my credit, that pregnancy was not  _ entirely  _ planned.”

margaret instinctively ran a hand over her stomach. “this one is. all of ours have been planned, i guess. the  _ first _ one was hyper-planned, for like, five years before it happened.” she briefly recalled the much more recent visits to the fertility clinic before ned was conceived, where it had turned out that there wasn’t anything actually wrong with either of them ( _ or at least not anything that carried over _ ), they just didn’t have very raging hormones. both of them, simultaneously.  _ would have been nice to know—would’ve saved a lot of time appealing to god to fix my broken womb.  _ “you didn’t have that problem.”

“no, i think i was far too fertile for my own good. if i could have saved some leftovers for you, i would have.” again, catherine decided not to think about her children with owen for too long.

when henry reached the end of that night’s hagiography, he turned serious. “ned, i have something really important to tell you.”

ned sleepily sat up in bed, slightly alarmed. “uh-huh?”

henry grabbed one of his hands in both of his own. this wasn’t part of the plan, but he couldn’t hold it in anymore— _ surely margaret would forgive him? _ “your mom and i are pretty sure we’re going to have another baby.”

ned pulled his hand away. “but you didn’t last time.”

henry decided he’d ask his mother later if he had been so cavalier about the concept of  _ last time  _ as a child, but he guessed the answer was  _ no.  _ “well, a  _ lot _ of things are different now, and we didn’t exactly stop after you on purpose.”

ned remembered asking his mother, once, after meeting his grandfather for the first time, why he didn’t have any brothers or sisters. she had lightly ruffled his hair, and answered, “we tried for a very long time just to have you. if  _ maman  _ and papa didn’t have to live apart right now, maybe we’d have the time to make a little  _ henri  _ or  _ marguerite  _ or whatever.” that hadn’t been entirely true, but it wasn’t a good time to explain the extent of his father’s mental condition. 

ned simply said, “i guess that makes sense.”

“well, are you excited about it?”

“is it a little brother or a little sister?”

henry smiled. “we don’t know yet. does it matter to you?”

ned thought for a moment. “you already have a little boy. you should tell mom to make a little girl.” 

_ where was she going, out in the rain? _ _  
_

margaret hadn’t known at the time. she hadn’t even realized it was raining, so stuck inside her own mind, until the water hit her hair and bare arms and legs. she ran, ignoring the pain in her back, ignoring the way that catherine had started to apologize as she left. 

she didn’t make it very far, maybe only a few blocks away.

_ why did she come back? _

she heard her name.

catherine and henry shouting her name in harmony—it started as “margaret,” but slowly sounded more and more like “ _ marguerite. _ ” she stopped in her tracks and turned around. 

for a moment, when she watched her husband running towards her, she imagined that they were in very different circumstances; she saw him as he appeared to her once, afraid that she would succumb to a routine fever but not allowed to step any closer to her bed. but it wasn’t  _ him _ , he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts that were slowly accumulating raindrops. 

catherine didn’t run. margaret didn’t run either, sore from the unexpected exertion. they both walked steadily towards each other, and when they got close enough, margaret could tell that catherine was smiling, but had clearly recently been crying. margaret was so taken aback that she immediately started sobbing. warmth soon surrounded her.

“ _ marguerite,  _ what’s wrong?  _ maman  _ says she’s sorry, she didn’t mean to upset you. are you feeling alright?”

margaret couldn’t remember the last time she cried. she must have, as a young child; she remembered having a lot to cry about, despite the best, ignorant efforts of her parents. now she was shedding the tears over henry and ned that she had been unable to  _ last time _ , now she was thinking about how ned might hate her and henry forever for bringing him back into the world like  _ this,  _ now she was thinking about why catherine was crying, and then she realized that horrible truth, the one worse than all others, that she had been holding off for centuries— 

_ it was all your fault. up until the last day, you could have saved ned—there was no pre-ordained track towards destruction, or divine retribution for an original sin, or unavoidable enemy—you could have sailed back towards france. you could have sailed for france a long time ago, henry in tow, and thousands wouldn’t have had to die in bloody fields. _

the last thing margaret remembered of that episode was the rain getting harder, and henry’s arms getting tighter as her muscles gave out. __

henry brought the covers up around ned, kissed his forehead, and turned the lights out. “i’ll tell mom to try to make a little sister for you. if she makes a little brother though...you’d forgive her, right?”

he thought he could hear his son smile in the dark. “yeah. but what’s gonna be its name?”

henry frowned. “we actually haven’t really talked about that yet.” he left out:  _ we didn’t want to get too attached to the idea of having another child before we knew we were capable of it.  _ names started to flood his head, though, even if most of them were easily discardable for being too old-sounding, or for also being his own name.

margaret turned to catherine. “if we have a girl, i think i want to name her after you.”

catherine furrowed her brow. “i’m flattered, but what for?”

“for being my mother-in-law twice? taking care of ned when we can’t? hosting us at your swanky apartment?”

catherine briefly scanned said apartment—it  _ was _ undeniably swanky, but hearing it described as such reminded her of the cost at which it had been purchased: having to suck up to the billionaire who also happened to be the father of her son.  _ twice.  _ she hadn’t liked him any more the second time; he still smelled of blood to her. once, it had been the blood of her countrymen, now it was the blood of children in foreign sweatshops.  _ did it matter?  _ either time, she never laid eyes on the victims herself, but could still feel their presence stalking him. he showed no indication to her of feeling the same. 

however, few things beat the look on his face the next morning when she revealed her true identity. he seemed betrayed, forced to wonder if all that attraction shown to him at last night’s party was performative.  _ yes, i forced him to introspect!  _ she suppressed the sense of hypocrisy that rose in her breast.  _ that  _ henry, though, did at least deliver on the promise he had made in bed:  _ if you really do get pregnant from this, i’ll give you and him whatever you want, for as long as i can.  _ he was so certain it would be the same son as last time, which she supposed was supported by the fact that  _ his  _ parents were the same, and sure enough, they popped out four boys and two girls in the correct order. she had no desire to meet any of them, and henry had the tact to introduce his son to his extended family away from chicago, probably at his big house on lake geneva or something. catherine hadn’t asked.

“i guess i just thought you still didn’t like me all that much. did henry tell you to say that?”

margaret stifled a laugh. “do you think henry could tell me to do anything i didn’t want to do?”

“fair point.”   


“seriously, though. i have...issues,” margaret said, quietly. “i know that. and i take them out on people who don’t deserve it. sometimes henry, occasionally ned, but what i said to  _ you _ years ago...was inexcusable. take it as an apology.”

“normal people would give a bouquet of flowers or one of those stupid heart-boxes of chocolate as an apology, not a grandchild named after them.”

“but i don’t think our problems are exactly  _ normal.  _ can’t you just take it as a compliment?” more than the intended amount of frustration came out. “i’m sorry.”

catherine just nodded. “we have more work to do. we both know that there’s no easy fix. there might not even be a hard one.” she shrugged. “for the record, i forgive you. i forgave you for... _ most  _ things, when you passed out on the sidewalk in the rain.” 

margaret sighed. “right. yeah, sometimes i forget about that part. i don’t think i ever asked you what happened after.”

“well, you could still walk, but just a little. henry was freaking the hell out, so i did most of the carrying.”

margaret gasped. “wait, what? i would’ve been using that as leverage over me all this time if i were you!”

“well, we’re very different women, aren’t we? anyways, henry was seriously concerned that something had happened to the baby—and also to you, of course—so once i got you back up here and on the couch, i had to calm him down, too. you weren’t out for very long, just a couple minutes, and even then i could tell you weren’t totally unconscious. you didn’t want to talk about it afterwards, or really about anything at all, so once i made sure you were fine i let henry take you home.”

margaret crossed her arms in thought. “yeah, i guess that pretty much lines up with what i remember. you want to know what that was about? i...i realized that everything was my fault. i had been blocking it out for so long—like, literally  _ so  _ long—that when i realized it i couldn’t think or feel anything anymore. actually, the same thing happened to me after tewkesbury, funnily enough.” neither of their expressions indicated that that was, in fact,  _ funnily enough. _

at that moment, henry descended the stairs and walked over to where catherine and margaret were sitting. he didn’t like the sound of  _ tewkesbury.  _ “am i interrupting something?”

margaret wiped away a few tears— _ did pregnancy always have to make her emotional?  _ “no, dear. it’s fine. your mom and i were just...reminiscing.” 

before he could sit down, catherine stood up and embraced her son. “ _ marguerite  _ told me about the baby. i’m so happy for you two,” and quieter, “i know you’ve wanted a second for so long.”

henry returned the hug, resting his head on her shoulder. “yeah, it’s been such a relief so far. i don’t…” he swallowed. “i don’t want to think about anything going wrong.”

he felt heat on his back. margaret joined the embrace, pinning henry between her and catherine. “forgive me for the cliche, but we’re in this together.” as they broke apart, margaret moved her hands to his shoulders. “i told your mom that if it’s a girl, we should name her  _ catherine.  _ is that okay with you?”

catherine suppressed a laugh.  _ of  _ course _ she didn’t even ask him first.  _ but henry turned to his wife with a bright smile. “oh, yes, of course! i was actually just thinking about names, because i, uh,  _ might  _ have told ned, and he wanted to know what to call it…”

margaret stiffened. “wait, henry, i thought we were going to tell ned  _ together—” _

“shit, shit, sorry,” henry muttered, and margaret cupped his cheek.

“forget about it. we’ll all talk about it in the morning. what did he say to you, though?”

henry pulled her hand away from his face and held it in his own. “he wants a little sister, but he said he’ll  _ forgive  _ you if it’s a boy. good to know.” 

margaret broke into laughter. “oh, god, okay, i’m glad he won’t reject me as his mother.” for just a moment, she thought about an argument, long ago, between her and ned— _ why do boys have to become such moody teenagers? _ —in french, no less—about whether his father was  _ worth  _ rescuing.  _ that is, if he even  _ is  _ my father,  _ and that had earned him a smack on the head. 

but ned showed no signs of feeling the same way about his dad anymore. no, instead he was coming down the steps in his pajamas with a mischievous grin on his face. “you guys are loud.”

margaret would normally have felt some irritation at this, and hastily herded him back to his bed, but she instead walked over to him and swept him up in her arms. “i’m sorry, dear. we’re all just so excited about the baby.” 

ned giggled. “so it’s for real?”

“you didn’t think your dad was lying, did you?”

henry looked slightly sheepish at this, but ned shook his head adamantly. “no, no, not dad.” when margaret faced him, their son wrapped around her, and another child already forming inside of her, henry was overcome with such a sense of love that it nearly paralyzed him. her face fell at his hesitation.  _ no, no, margaret, i didn’t mean it like that.  _

margaret clutched ned tighter. a little voice, somewhere inside her, whispered:  _ you’ll never really understand him.  _ ned squirmed in her arms.  _ no, you’re right. there is so much that i’ll never understand.  _ in that moment, though, with the moonlight reflecting on the lake in just the right way, that seemed like something to celebrate, not despair over. 

**Author's Note:**

> the title is a reference to the legend about lake superior made famous by gordon lightfoot's "the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald," that "the lake never gives up its dead," in reference to the low temperature of the water preventing bodies from shipwrecks resurfacing ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior#Shipwrecks) explains this better than i can). obviously, chicago is on the shores of lake michigan, not superior, but i thought the line had a certain fitting poetry to it.
> 
> margaret's tirade against catherine is purposefully anachronistic: while the latter's choice of partner (a fairly unknown welsh courtier) was indeed scandalous, the fact that she left henry's household around the time that she did was expected of noblewomen of the time (note: my research on this time period has been SUPER amateur, if i'm wrong someone please correct me). margaret, catherine, and every other character in this weird little universe i've constructed have trouble with separating the thoughts, feelings, memories, opinions, attitudes, etc. they've collected during their current lifetimes from the ones they had in their previous lifetimes, which i think makes them more relatable to very modern people trying to understand very historical ones. catherine's response, therefore, while slightly patronizing, is fair--margaret IS letting complicated-pregnancy-angst get in the way of her better judgment. 
> 
> also, margaret's comment about her FIRST pregnancy being planned for "like, five years before it happened" is based off of my baseless conjecture that part of the reason why henry and margaret didn't conceive for eight-or-so years is because they didn't start having regular sexual relations for a while, considering that they were both relatively young and no evidence suggests that either had great sexual appetites anyways.


End file.
